When it comes to cooking fresh lobster, the Swiss are now saying: We feel your pain.

A law goes into effect March 1 that bans the common cooking method of tossing a live lobster into a big pot of boiling water, quickly killing the tasty crustacean. That practice is being outlawed because the Swiss say it’s cruel and lobsters can sense pain.

The first national legislation of its kind in the world calls for a more humane death for lobsters, by “rendering them unconscious” before plunging them into scalding water. Two methods are recommended: Electrocution or sedating the lobster by dipping it into salt water and then thrusting a knife into its brain.

In addition to lobsters, USA Today further reports, the new law provides that dogs cannot be punished for barking and that cats and hamsters must be allowed to see and/or socialize with others of their species.

The same law also gives domestic pets further protections, such as dogs can no longer be punished for barking.

The measure is part of the broad principle of “animal dignity” enshrined in Switzerland’s constitution, the only country to have such a provision. The constitution already protects how various species must be treated and specifies that animals need socialization.

That means cats must have a daily visual contact with other felines, and hamsters or guinea pigs must be kept in pairs. And anyone who flushes a pet goldfish down the toilet is breaking the law.

The Swiss initially wanted to ban the import of live lobsters completely, but as this would violate international trade agreements, they moved to protect them from “inhumane” treatment during transport and up to the time of their death.

In addition to banning the cooking of live lobsters, the Swiss law also provides that crustaceans be protected in transit. It will no longer be legal to transport live lobsters and crabs on ice; they must be kept in seawater.

USA Today continues:

Although lobster consumption in this land-locked country is “negligible,” the parliament had tried to ban the import of all live lobsters to prevent them from an agonizing death at the hands of Swiss restaurant cooks, Kunfermann said.

That drastic measure against imports would violate international trade agreements, so authorities instead issued new rules on how to make the lobsters’ demise as painless as possible.

The law also stipulates that lobsters must be transported to their final Swiss destination in their natural environment — seawater — rather than on ice.

The government vows that offenders will not slip through the net. State officials will be responsible for enforcement, and Kunfermann said offenders could land in a lot of hot water, with sentences of up to three years in prison.

The Swiss are not alone in their desire to ban the cooking of live lobsters. The UK is also considering similar measures.

As Alton Brown on “Good Eats” points out, lobsters are close relatives of cockroaches. Well… far enough away for me to allow me to enjoy my “bug problem”. Some suggest submerging them in wine (cheap hopefully) so that they die a painless and happy death when they take the plunge.

Wait until they talk with Prince Charles about plants and their feelings. Do amoeba dream?

Since lobsters are a form of ‘bug’ I now await the decree from our Greater and More Enlightened Minds that all exterminators must first render cockroaches unconscious with an appropriate anesthesia before administering the lethal dose of poison.

Keen legal minds at peta and other lefty bastions suggested electrocution or “stabbing them in the brain with a knife.”

I can see it now: here, mr. lobster, just stick your claw in this light socket (evil laugh). Or: you won’t feel a thing as I jam this knife in your head, searching around hunting for your miniscule brain (louder evil laugh).

Has the world gone mad!!? Painless lobster murder…..Olympic curlers on drugs…..cats and dogs living in harmony…..AAAAAGH!

Anæsthetizing crustaceans is not difficult. A proper lab would use tricaine mesylate, easily (and inexpensively) available even in the hyper-regulated United States as MS-222 or Tricane-S, used for sedating or euthanizing fish. Of course “shellfish” aren’t “fish” in any useful sense, but it works on pretty much everything which breathes fresh or salt water.

The typical cook is, of course, not a marine biologist, and so may be unaware that lobsters do indeed have nervous systems, can feel pain (though what they do with the information is not so clear) and react to it, and, when they find themselves in a difficult situation, can communicate that fact to other nearby lobsters.

The average jamoke knows even less about arthropods than the average cook. The man in the street can’t even distinguish a left-handed from a right-handed lobster, or tell the boys from the girls.

Personally, I wouldn’t boil an animal to death. (Well, maybe if I was really mad at it.) But that’s not the same as saying it should be a matter of law.

I don’t know what the good Prof. has to say on lobsters in Switzerland, I haven’t seen a live lobster in years. I would just about bank on a bet that Cathy Newman is already trying to stitch the good prof. up now.

Well, then, does this mean that they’re more concerned with the pain that lobsters might experience than the actual pain that some of their women are experiencing at the hands of recent arrivals in their country?

The Swiss have completely overlooked the longest-lived critters yet; rocks. They rip ’em apart with picks and hammers and then crush them into ticky-tacky road gravels, entirely stripped of their own identities.

I imagine two cats in small housing units could be a challenge to some. Introducing a new cat into a household that already has one, to comply with the law, will make everybody miserable. Rather than introduce a new cat, I can see some people dumping their cats along the sides of the road as its way easier. The feral feline population is about to skyrocket. Feral hamsters too… Unintended consequences of government intervention.